Edogawa Niche Prize 2018 to be awarded to Prof. James Edgar Till,
Discoverer of Stem Cells

Tokyo, 15 th October, 2018: The Edogawa Niche Prize 2018 jointly constituted by NCRM -
Nichi-In Centre for Regenerative Medicine and the Edogawa Hospital, Tokyo Japan will be
awarded to Prof. James Edgar Till, Professor Emeritus, University of Toronto, Canada for
his discovery of stem cells jointly with Prof. Ernest McCulloch in the 1960’s
(www.edogawanicheprize.org)

The discovery of stem cells can be considered as one of the most significant discoveries in the
field of Biological Sciences as it heralded the birth of the Speciality of Regenerative Medicine
which has given hope to treat several diseases that don’t have a definitive cure at the moment
and hence has been chosen as the worthy subject for the first Edogawa Niche Prize by the
NCRM and Jinsei-sha (joint committee) for the year 2018.

NCRM is an Indo-Japan JV institute working on basic research & translation in Regenerative
medicine, a rapidly evolving field with essential contribution from various domains of science
apart from biology and medicine such as biomaterials, physics, chemistry, synthetic biology etc.,
NCRM NICHE (www.ncrmniche.org) is an inaugural commemorative academic event being
conducted every year in October, since 2006, which brings together young stakeholders through
the Fujio Cup Quiz -An active knowledge gaining event, a robust & novel platform for
propagation of science & networking among young scholars from all over the world (Earlier
held India until 2016) paving way for path breaking solutions through such inter-disciplinary
interactions. This event was held in Tokyo in 2017 during when Dr Masahiro Katoh
(Chairman of Edogawa Hospitals, Japan) announced about the Edogawa NICHE prize in
the presence of Prof. Gary Levy (Univ. of Toronto, Canada) and Prof. Jurgen Hescheler
(Univ. of Cologne & GSZ, Germany). The EDOGAWA-NICHE PRIZE will be awarded to an
individual or in special cases individuals, who are physicians and/or scientists from around the
world chosen by the committee, based on their contribution to development of a novel healthcare
solution that enables prevention or diagnosis or treatment of any disease, which is a result of an
inter-disciplinary interaction among different fields of science.

In a meeting between Jinsei-sha (Parent organization of Edogawa Hospitals) and NCRM
joint committee, it was unanimously decided to honour Prof. James Edgar Till for his
discovery of stem cells jointly with Prof. Ernest McCulloch with the Edogawa NICHE prize
in the first year of its establishment. Prof. James Edgar Till is awarded the Edogawa
NICHE Prize 2018 consists of a Medal, a Plaque and a cash reward of One Million
Japanese yen.

The Edogawa Niche Prize 2018 will be awarded to Prof. James Edgar Till in an Award
ceremony in the University of Toronto, Canada and the ceremony will be videocasted during the
NCRM NICHE 2018 to be held in Tokyo, Japan on the 21 st of October 2018. Prof. Dr. Jun
Hirabayashi, AIST, Japan & Prof. Dr. G. Ian Gallicano, Georgetown University Medical Center,
Washington, DC, USA, Dr. Takeyoshi Shimoji, Consultant Neurosurgeon of the Amekudai
Hospital, Okinawa, Japan and collaborators of the German Society for Stem Cell Research
(GSZ), Cologne, Germany Training Program in Regenerative Medicine (TPRM), Canada and
the Edogawa Evolutionary Laboratory of Science (EELS), Japan will be part of the NCRM
NICHE 2018 event scheduled to be held from 21 st October to 23 rd October 2018 in the Shibaura
Institute of Technology, Tokyo, Japan.

Dr Till was born in Lloydminster Saskatchewan and received a Bachelor of Arts in 1952 and Master of Science in 1954 in physics at the University of Saskatchewan having received scholarships from the National Research Council and Standard Oil Company. Dr Till then went
on to receive a PhD at Yale University in biophysics in 1957. He was then recruited to the
Ontario Cancer Institute at Princess Margaret Hospital as a post-doctoral fellow at the University
of Toronto. It was there he met Dr Ernest McCulloch and together they conducted their ground
breaking work involving injection of bone marrow cells into irradiated mice. They made the
sentinel observation of finding clones of cells within the spleen, although at that time they called
them lumps. This first work was published in the journal Radiation Research in 1961. They
showed that these marrow cells were capable of self renewal and this work established the
concept of multilineage stem cells which was published in Nature and Journal of Cellular and
Comparative Physiology in 1963. His work has had huge application in the field of bone marrow
transplantation, the treatment of cancer and tolerance induction.

In the coming years, the Fujio Cup Quiz Elite delegates from 2006 will have a priority to nominate the Edogawa NICHE Prize awardee through the website www.edogawanicheprize.org